Low priority tasks and projects

12-08-2009, 03:27 AM

I want to act more on IMPORTANT projects (for me these are the project that give the maximum money payoff). On the other hand I get a lot of incoming meeting requests that I can't cancel or delegate (direct report wanted to discuss the salary; need to be awarded and must be there; need to push direct reports meeting; sports; preparing sales report etc). None of those lead directly to money.

I sit down and think that I need to do IMPORTANT projects, simulationously get lots of new inputs, and finally just sit and do nothing instead.

Any ideas on when to do those sometimes urgent low priority tasks? Schedule a block of time and move it if needed? Any simple ideas?

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I'm sorry, novitskaya, but I'm having a difficult time understanding exactly what you're asking.

If you're asking "When do I work on urgent but low-priority tasks," you work on them whenever you have time. That's what the Next Actions lists are for, so that as you have free time you can look at them and decide on the best use of your time at that moment.

None of us can say when that time will appear. If you don't have enough time in general, there are a few options: drop some work or delegate some work.

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If its low priority and you have more urgent or bigger pay back things to do then do them and forget about the little things.

What I do daily (though you could do it less that that if you wanted) is, as Brent said, review your next actions lists and decide in the moment what you should do next, write those "bigger" things down and your ready to go.

Also if you want (and I do myself) is write a list of "smaller" stuff I want to get done IF I get the "bigger" things done. And it doesn't matter to me if i get around to doing those smaller things. That's just part becoming successful in chosen areas by NOT doing the low priority stuff.

Like me visiting and posting on here now, its low priority. but since I've whizzed through the most important stuff already I'm free to do whatever.

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Low priority tasks tend to get all the time. Do you think it's worth scheduling time for high priority work?

Sometimes, yes!

The problem with scheduling time for certain kinds of work is that you're basically saying, "I am deciding now that this block of time a week from now will be the best time to work on high-priority items." How can you know that? What if something urgent crops up ten minutes before that time slot?

It's better, in general, to work naturally off your Next Actions lists. That way, you can make the decision in the present moment regarding what's best to do; low-priority or high-priority.

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On the other hand I get a lot of incoming meeting requests that I can't cancel or delegate

It depends. Sometimes there's more flexibility than there first appears.

Depending on the situation, I might try skipping one of these "mandatory" meetings and see how it works out. I'd want to have all my ducks in a row first. If you can prove you closed a $100K deal instead of going to a meeting, they might be willing to cut you some slack.

If not, this tends to be the sort of thing that leads people to seek employment with a company with goals more similar to their own.